


The Disconnect

by BeautyCrowdsMe



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 18:27:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4359641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautyCrowdsMe/pseuds/BeautyCrowdsMe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Find somebody else to play your hero.” </p>
<p>At the end of episode 2x14, Carmilla and Laura talk but nothing really changes. But maybe change needs time to take root. And perhaps Danny is the smartest of them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Disconnect

Laura looked at Carmilla, panic rising in her throat. “What?” 

The question fell out of her mouth, refusing to let her come up with anything more eloquent. Carmilla was staring resolutely at her hands. 

“No” Carmilla finally looked up. “I won’t do it.” She held her gaze and Laura couldn’t tell if her eyes were projecting defiance or an apology.  
“Find somebody else to play your hero.” After some hesitation she strode to the computer, her back facing Laura.

Laura moved around the chair to follow her but decided to hang back and give Carmilla her space. She ignored the way Danny looked at Carmilla with almost-pity and the way Lafontaine and JP hid in the doorway. Nobody else had said a word. Maybe she had been a bit hasty when she declared that they all wanted Carmilla as the student representative. She tried to say as much but was cut off by Carmilla.

“I need to be anywhere but here right now. I’ll see you later.” And with that she vanished in a puff of angry black smoke. 

 

Hours later Laura slowly climbed the stairs to the solarium. She moved slowly partly because the day’s events weighed heavily on her mind and partly to give Carmilla time to magically teleport into the solarium if she wasn’t already there. 

She was relieved to see her favourite broody vampire standing by the far glass wall. She wasn’t looking up at the stars and instead seemed to be staring into the horizon. Laura assumed she was deep in thought because it was too dark to really see anything out there. 

“I was, uh, hoping you would be here,” Laura said, trying to project some lightheartedness into her voice.

“Congratulations. For once I did what you hoped I would do,” Carmilla drawled without turning around. 

Laura sighed, feeling tendrils of frustration manifesting themselves into a very real headache. “Can we not do this, Carm? I didn’t come here to fight, I came to talk.” She sat down on the couch closest to Carmilla. 

“This isn’t something a quick conversation will fix, Laura. This isn’t a difference of opinions, it’s…something fundamental.” Carmilla turned to face Laura, “Like a disconnect between the very way in which we both see the world.”

“Ok,” Laura shook her head, trying to organize her thoughts. “What are you talking about? Me asking you to be the student representative was a mistake, I see that now. Obviously I shouldn’t try and force you to do things you don’t want to do, but—”

“You’re not just asking me to do things I don’t want to do, Laura. You’re asking me to be someone that I’m not. That I never can be.”

Laura stood up, unable to keep up the pretense that everything was going just fine. “But you are the hero. I know that’s true because I saw what you did, I was there!” 

“And that’s the problem,” Carmilla retorted. “You always see what you want to see. When you found out I was a vampire you were convinced I was the villain. When I rescued you from the light, you were convinced I was the hero. Admit it Laura, you love controlling the narrative and putting everyone into neat little boxes to adhere to your perfect principles of morality.” 

“Right…” Laura said slowly. “I suppose next you’re going to say that I refuse to be happy outside of the conditions that I’ve attached to my happiness, right?” 

Carmilla at least looked somewhat guilty but stood her ground. So what if the Camus reading described Laura to a T? It wasn’t a crime to read. “I just feel like I don’t make you happy because I can’t fit into your boxes. Why do you keep making me choose between you and my sister?”

“Because it shouldn’t even be a choice! Mattie is evil. The Dean was evil. We are fighting for the truth and to prevent anyone else from getting hurt. We’re the good guys!”

“We don’t know if Mattie even killed those newspaper kids. You need her to be the villain so that someone can be blamed for this mess.” 

Laura ignored the totally unfounded accusation and focused on Mattie. “Even if she didn’t kill those kids, she’s a murderer, Carmilla.”

“Well if you were paying attention to Vordenberg, I’m a murderer.” She hesitated. “You’re a murderer.” 

“That’s not—that’s different.” Even to her own ears, Laura sounded unconvincing. What could she possibly say without sounding like a hypocrite?

As if reading her mind, Carmilla said, “Silly me, of course it’s acceptable as long as we’re killing people in the name of the good guys. Let’s conveniently forget that the people we’re fighting happened to be my mother, my brother, and now my sister.” She threw her hands up in futility. 

Laura honestly felt like doing the same. “What do you want from me, Carmilla? We all make our own choices in life. It’s not my fault that the other side made bad decisions.” 

Carmilla sighed and for a second Laura thought she would storm off. However, she moved towards the couch and sat down heavily. Laura sat down next to her. 

“I’m trying to get you to see that there are no sides. Life isn’t black and white, Laura. Nothing is constant; life and even death are impermanent,” she said, gesturing to her supernatural state to make a point. 

Laura didn’t respond because Carmilla was so wrong. Lots of things were 100% set in stone. Like the fact that murdering innocent people is wrong. Or the fact that she loved her dad. Or the fact that baby animals are ten times cuter than their adult form. 

Seeing that Laura was still skeptical, Carmilla asked: “What do you see when you look at the stars?”

Laura leaned her head back and look up. She was tired of talking in circles. “I see the same thing I saw yesterday and the day before that and I assume I’ll see the same thing tomorrow.”

“You know I’ve lived long enough to see some stars reach the end of their lives,” Carmilla said quietly. “The night sky I see now is different from the one I used to see in my childhood. A very slight difference, but still. In fact, the stars we are seeing now are really just projections of how they looked 43 years ago. Something to do with how far away they are and the way light travels.”

Laura took Carmilla’s hand, rubbing her thumb along her knuckles. “You can skip the incoming lecture. I get it, ok? Even stars are transient and change over time, nothing is constant, etc. etc.” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. 

“That’s not what I was going to say, actually,” Carmilla smirked. But her expression grew serious again. She stared at their intertwined hands.

“Yes even stars are affected by the passage of time but that takes billions of years. So to you, they might as well be eternally fixed in the sky. The point is that you can’t always trust what you see.” She got up and went to look out the glass wall again. Laura suddenly wondered if Carmilla had night vision, if she could see an entire world that Laura couldn’t. 

“You can go your whole life believing something is true, Laura. But the fact that nothing has proven you wrong, doesn’t mean you’re right.” She placed a hand on the glass, reveling in its coolness. 

“I told you that I would be anything you need.” Carmilla turned her head to look at Laura, hand still on the glass, steadying her. “But don’t confuse me playing the hero with me actually being a hero.” 

Laura was speechless in the worst way possible. Carmilla turned to face her completely and glanced at the door. Two seconds later Danny burst into the solarium, her arrival undoubtedly unsurprising to Carmilla and her super hearing.

Looking nervously between the couple, Danny stated, “sorry to bother you guys so late but Lafontaine and JP think they found a lead in the newspaper archives.”

Laura rose immediately and after a moment of inner debate, left without another word. Carmilla sighed and had her own inner debate. 

“Hey Amazon.” Danny didn’t respond but she didn’t leave either. She remained impassively by the door. 

“Do you think I’m…a coward? Because I want to escape with Laura to somewhere far away from this mess?” She hated herself for being apprehensive. For caring at all what the beanstalk thought of her. She forced herself to look at the redhead. 

Danny’s neutral expression faltered, then softened. “Not at all. I think—I think that wanting to protect the person you love is an incredibly human response, Carmilla.” 

She turned to leave. Carmilla followed her down the stairs mulling over what Danny said. She wondered if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

When they met up with the rest of the group and Laura gave Carmilla a small smile, Carmilla decided the answer to that didn’t really matter much after all.


End file.
